Mr. Denis Duggan:

The Senator makes a good point. When we look at, for example, some of the other international teams, a lot of their main sponsors are very embedded in equestrian sports and rural pursuits, if we can call them that. I think issues with social licence, horse welfare and so on can be challenging for some sponsors that have no experience of either equestrian sports or the broader rural pursuit type of activities. Finding a sponsor that is comfortable in this space is a challenge. In our context, as I said, we have some very valuable domestic sponsors, but the Irish high-performance showjumping team compete on every continent. They are completely international. Our squad of athletes numbers in excess of 25 in the senior high-performance programme and are based everywhere from Kentucky and Abu Dhabi to Wellington in Florida, Calgary in Canada, the UK and Germany. They are scattered all over the world and compete all over the world, which, on one level, should be very attractive for a sponsor. One of the big differences between our side of equestrianism, if I can call it that, by comparison with, say, the racing industry is that there is no betting involved in our side. As a result, a lot of the sponsorship seen in the thoroughbred world of races and so on is not really open to us. That is a challenge in itself, along with other issues.